by Dion Fortune
They strolled back down the couloir to find that Ursula had at last put in an appearance. Her brother thought that she looked remarkably fresh and radiant, considering the experience she had been through the previous day, but Murchison paid no attention to her. His dark mood did not seem to affect his appetite, however, for he did ample justice to a second breakfast.
‘I wonder if you would take the car and run over to Llandudno, Murchison, and see what you can do in the way of shirts,’ said Brangwyn. ‘I feel as grimy as a collier after our run yesterday. What would you like to do, Ursula? Would you like to go with him for the run?’
Murchison expected her to decline, but to his surprise she accepted, alleging that she would be glad of the opportunity for a little shopping herself.
They started off in the brilliant mountain sunshine, dropping down the steep pass to the plain, and making their way through wide valleys to the coast.
It was not until they went to have a cup of coffee in a café, at the girl’s suggestion, that there was any conversation between them.
‘I want to talk to you,’ said the girl abruptly.
‘Yes?’ said Murchison, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.
She lifted her eyes from her cup, where she had been prodding the sugar with an absorbed preoccupation, and for a moment she hated him. He was so terribly heavy and unresponsive and slow in the uptake; and she disliked blue eyes, anyway, they were so insipid. But there was no backing out now; he was sitting looking at her with a questioning air, and looked as if he would continue to sit till the day of judgement. She felt that no help would be forthcoming from him, and that she must take the initiative and make use of him if he were to be any help to her at all.
She returned to the consideration of her coffee to get away from his unblinking gaze. At length she managed to speak, though she could not look up.
‘I had a pretty bad fright yesterday.’
‘So I gathered. It was a good job for you the dog was handy.’
‘It wasn’t so much that. I don’t suppose he would have done me any real injury. It was myself I was scared at — the extent I am under his influence.’
‘I think he would have done you a pretty real injury if you had held out.’
Ursula returned gaze for gaze with Murchison. ‘Will you tell me frankly why you are doing all this?’
‘Because your brother pays me to, Miss Brangwyn.’
Ursula blushed crimson and dropped her eyes to her cup again.
‘Did you think I was doing it for you?’
The girl looked up, speechless and white with anger.
‘No, I’m not doing it for you. I’m not such a fool as all that,’ said Murchison.
‘It seems to me,’ said Ursula, speaking with difficulty, ‘that you and I might as well give up the idea of trying to work together.’
‘Well, what is it you want from me?’
Ursula was speechless. She knew what her brother’s ideas were, and she gathered that Murchison also knew now. She half rose from her chair, but the man’s eyes held her. She did not think that blue eyes were insipid now. They were terrible. She thought they were the cruellest eyes she had ever seen.
‘I know your brother picked me out of the gutter. I know I’m well paid. But there are some things I draw the line at, and you’re one of them. I don’t like you any better than you like me, Miss Brangwyn, but I’ll do my job of work with you because your brother wants me to, and because you need it, but there it begins and ends. As long as you understand that, it’s all right, and if you’ll tell me what you want, I’ll do my best to carry it out.’
‘I don’t want anything!’ cried Ursula furiously. ‘It’s an impossible situation. I have told my brother so all along.’
‘I think so, too,’ said Murchison sulkily. ‘I’ll cash in my cheques when we get back.’
‘I shan’t go back with you. I absolutely refuse to drive back with you. I shall stop at an hotel for the night, and my brother can fetch me in the morning.’
‘All right. Which hotel?’
‘That is my business.’
‘No, it isn’t, it’s mine also. It is up to me to see that you don’t fall into Fouldes’ hands. That’s what I’m paid for.’
A shadow fell across their table.
‘If you don’t like your escort, Ursula, perhaps you would care to accept mine?’ They looked up, startled, to see Fouldes standing over them, smiling. He drew up a chair and sat down at their table, still smiling.
‘I gather, Mr Murchison, that your attitude is not altogether acceptable to Miss Brangwyn, which is hardly to be wondered at, and I am going to give myself the pleasure of asking you to mind your manners.’
Everything disappeared before Murchison in a blaze of wrath. He knew that he was at a disadvantage with the subtler man, for he could not very well use force in the restaurant. He also knew that he had quarrelled with Ursula without provocation, and been insultingly rude to her, and that she was very angry, and justifiably so. Ursula Brangwyn, as proud as Lucifer, would go over to Fouldes simply to spite Murchison. He saw that she was gathering her furs about her. Fouldes, smiling maliciously, drew back her chair as she rose. She turned her back on Murchison, and Fouldes put her furs around her shoulders.
Murchison got to his feet. The other’s smile began to fade. All the cards were in his hands, but he did not like the look on the Yorkshireman’s face.
Murchison was a slow mover till he got going, and none of the other occupants of the café guessed that there was a row in progress. He lurched clumsily forward, and Fouldes, light as a stag, gave back.
‘Don’t let us have a scene in public,’ he said.
‘You’ll have what you make,’ said Murchison.
Fouldes gave back again.
‘Go out and get into my car, Kitten,’ he said. ‘There is no need for you to be involved in this. I will get the management to deal with him.’
Murchison felt himself to be battling at a disadvantage with quicker wits than his. Moreover, he had lost his selfcontrol and could not trust himself. The old berserker rage that had so often betrayed him was rising within him, and he knew that once that broke bounds every man’s hand would be against him. If he took the law into his own hands the management would send for the police; if he did not, Ursula Brangwyn would walk out with Fouldes, betrayed by his own savage temper.
He felt like a bated bull turning frantically on his elusive tormentors. The image of the bull brought back to him all the scheme of things that Brangwyn had half hinted and half explained, and it seemed to him as if everything worth having in life were collapsing about his ears. It was not his job he thought of; to do him justice, that never entered his head. It was the down-rushing power of that marvellous ritual of the earth in spring. He would lose all that; he would lose all the possibilities it opened up, dimly though he guessed them. Ursula and he were bound together by that ritual. However much he hated her, or she hated him, that experience shared had established a bond between them. And Fouldes was taking her from him. Taking her to unspeakable degradation. The blind fury of the wild beast in defence of its mate surged up within him, and the berserker rage burst bounds.
He caught Ursula round the waist.
‘You’re coming with me,’ he said, and before anyone could interfere he swept her out of the shop, pushed her into the car, sprang in himself, and was flying down the wide street at sixty miles an hour.
It did not take them many minutes at this gait to get clear of the town. A road between half-built houses led down to the shore, and he turned the car down it. In a few moments they had bumped over the loose sand of the dunes and come to a standstill beside the line of seaweed that showed highwater mark, the wide and treacherous flats of the bay stretching before them almost to the horizon.
He stopped the engine, and there was dead silence except for the crying of gulls. He stared out over the flats at the distant sea with unseeing eyes. Ursula Brangwyn, the breath knocked out of her, stared at h
im. What had provoked this storm that had suddenly come out of the blue?
He turned slowly round. ‘I wish to apologize,’ he said. ‘I am afraid I let you in for a good deal of unpleasantness. I am exceedingly sorry. I hope you’ll forget it if you can. I don’t know what possessed me to speak as I did. I didn’t mean to.’
‘There is nothing in that,’ said Ursula quietly. ‘I have thought no more about it. We both spoke hastily and said a lot more than we meant. But I wish I knew what it was all about. It blew up so suddenly, all out of nothing.’
‘I don’t know what it was about any more than you do,’ said Murchison moodily, resting his elbow on the steering-wheel and his chin in his hand, and staring out over the desolate flats to the far-off sea. ‘I suddenly got mad with you. I don’t know why. I felt I was in a very false position with you, and I resented it.’
‘It is a very queer position for both of us,’ said Ursula.
‘Very,’ said Murchison, continuing to stare at the distant line of breakers.
‘Can you see the end of it?’ asked the girl tentatively.
‘No, frankly, I can’t. But I can see a most awful bust-up on the way. I think we’re playing with fire, if you ask me.’
‘In what way?’
‘Need we be crude? You weren’t born yesterday. You know the way of the world, I take it. You are a very attractive woman, and I am a very lonely man. You aren’t my style, and I’m not yours, and no good could come of it. And, anyway, I have no money.’
‘Need that worry us?’ said Ursula.
‘It has begun to worry me,’ said Murchison. ‘I thought I could do what you needed in cold blood, but I find I can’t.’
‘I — I think it will be all right,’ said the girl in a low voice.
‘I don’t, and perhaps I know more about it than you do.’
‘Mr Murchison, don’t worry about it. It will be all right. I know what I am saying.’
He turned and looked at her sulkily.
‘I think you are talking through your hat,’ he said.
‘No, I am not. I know what I am talking about. It is the result of that ritual we worked together, the dance of the earth in spring. I can see that now.’
‘Well, I can’t,’ said Murchison, ‘and I think I had better drive you back.’ He pressed the self-starter. Ursula bent forward and switched off the ignition.
‘No, we have got to finish this now we have started.’ She laid her hand on his arm, and he frowned and drew away angrily at the touch.
‘Do you know that we have gone too far in this thing to back out?’
‘I don’t know anything about it. I have been let in for this without my knowledge or consent.’
‘Yes, I know you have, and so have I. My brother has been quite unscrupulous. But, all the same, it will be all right.’
‘It depends on what you call all right. Your standards mayn’t be the same as mine.’
Ursula took a firm hold on herself. ‘We were able to work the rite of the winged bull together, with all that it means.’
‘And what does it mean?’
‘It means a very curious spiritual bond between a man and a woman. It means much more than ordinary marriage ever could.’
‘It means a very invidious position for the man, Miss Brangwyn, if he is placed as I am.’
‘I know nothing of your affairs, Mr Murchison, except that your father was in the army, and you would have been, too, if the war had not put an end to his career. My brother thinks that you have very exceptional capacities, Mr Murchison, and I know you could have a very good career with him if you were willing.’
‘Yes, but am I willing?’
‘Well, aren’t you?’
‘God knows. I’d be a fool not to, placed as I am. I don’t know what possesses me to play up like this. I suppose it’s the dying kick of my self-respect.’
‘What do you mean? Surely we are not asking anything of you that can hurt your self-respect?’
‘Depends on your standards, dear lady.’
‘It seems to me that you have got a very bad inferiority complex and are being very silly,’ said Miss Brangwyn.
‘Yes, I expect you’re right. Shall we go home?’
‘I think we had better. I wouldn’t ask you to drive me if there were any other mode of conveyance.’
‘You can hire a car at Llandudno Junction. Or you can take the car back to the farm and I will take the train to London.’
‘Very good, drive me to Llandudno Junction.’ He started up the car without a word, and they bumped laboriously back on to the main road, or so he thought.
But they had not been driving very long when the road came to a dead end at an abandoned coastguard station, and they found themselves with an arm of the sea barring further progress.
‘Damn it all!’ said Murchison savagely, ‘where are we?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Ursula miserably. ‘I believe the main road turns inland somewhere about where we left it. We must be on the wrong road. We shall have to go back the way we came.’
He swung the car round impatiently; but he miscalculated the steerage-way required by a thoroughbred, and before he knew what was happening the frontwheels were in the ditch and he had as much hope of shifting the car as he had of moving mountains.
‘My God!’ was all he could find to say.
Ursula burst out laughing and slipped her hand through his arm.
‘It’s no use,’ she said. ‘The stars in their courses won’t let us part. We have got to be friends.’
‘Oh, my God!’ said Murchison, looking at her as she sat half turned towards him with her lips parted in laughter. ‘Now what are we going to do? Is it far from here to the nearest village where we can ‘phone?’
‘A good way, I should think, when you come to walk it. We have been travelling down this road for quite ten minutes, and one covers a good deal of ground in that time in a car.’
‘Well, then, you’ll have to wait here, and I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Very good.’
‘If you’ll get out, I’ll lift the seat out and put it inside this barn, you will be much more comfortable in there than in the car at this angle.’
They got out of the heeled-over car, and he did as he had suggested, making Ursula as comfortable as possible with rugs and her mink coat. Then he set off on his walk.
He was thankful to be alone. As always, Ursula Brangwyn went to his head at close quarters. He had used the right word when he had told her brother that he found her glamorous. She was like Lilith beguiling Adam. He remembered that Astley, who, God knows, wasn’t particular, had called her Morgan le Fay, the witch-sister of Arthur, to whom Merlin had taught all enchantments.
He had never believed it possible to dislike any woman quite so much. He hated her because he had been rude to her; because she was rich and sophisticated, and he was rough, uncouth. But, above all, he hated her because she attracted him so tremendously, and the only terms on which he could have her were terms which his pride would not allow.
He had hardly gone a mile, however, when he saw on the other side of the creek that flanked the road at that point a youth fishing for eels. He hailed him, explained the situation, and bid the youth take himself off at top speed to the main road, which was at no great distance as the crow flies, hail a passing car, and send a message to the nearest garage. Then he set out to return to the derelict coastguard station.
His walk had cooled him considerably, but it had not been long enough to lessen his smouldering sense of resentment against life in general, and Ursula Brangwyn in particular. In fact, it seemed as if every wrong life had ever done him — the career that had never got started, the home that could never be his, all the thwartings of his natural instincts, all the hammering of the square peg into the round hole to which he had been subjected for the best years of his life — everything seemed to gather up and focus on to Ursula Brangwyn, who fascinated him, but whom he did not like, and whom he co
uld never hope to meet on an equality.
He asked himself, as he walked back at a more leisurely pace over the sandy road, whether he would have asked her to marry him if he had been in a position to do so, and decided that he probably would, so great was the fascination she had for him, but it would certainly have turned out very badly. What could you expect if a girl married one man in order to get away from another. And, anyway, apart from her mink coat, she was pretty worthless. No girl who was any good would ever have got mixed up with a chap like Fouldes. This seemed incontestable to him, and deprived Ursula Brangwyn of any vestige of claim to his consideration that she might ever have possessed.
Then there came to him, in his evil mood, a bright idea. She had robbed him of every vestige of self-respect. Why not exploit her as she deserved to be exploited? He could see that she was getting quite keen on the scheme her brother had propounded, for some reason best known to herself. The fact that the scheme was no longer distasteful to her gave him a sense of power over her. And there came to Murchison a desire to repay on her all the humiliation he had received from life; he wished that Ursula Brangwyn in her mink coat should know humiliation as he had known it.
He would damn well rub her nose in it.
Ursula Brangwyn, left alone in the open-fronted shed looking out to sea, came to the conclusion that Murchison was the most extraordinary satisfying person when he took you in hand. Life had been lived at a high level during those few seconds when he caught hold of her and literally flung her out of the café and into the car. And the one thing above all others that she felt was that she could trust him; that he was absolutely reliable. And she knew that her brother felt the same about him, and she had great confidence in her brother. She felt rather ashamed of herself that she had not been able to see the possibilities in Murchison when she first met him. She guessed that hurt pride was at the bottom of Murchison’s trouble. His words, ‘You are a very attractive woman,’ had been balm of Gilead to her sore soul. She had been under the impression that he was lending himself to her brother’s schemes for no other reason than a financial one; or, at best, out of pity. There had been times when he had been extraordinarily kind. She suspected that he was more attracted by her than he was willing to admit, even to himself; and because he felt himself to be in an invidious position with regard to her, he was ruffling up his feathers in this alarming manner. But for all his mutterings and threatenings her feminine ear caught another note now and again in his voice.